The major protein component of wheat flour and triticale flour is gluten. Gluten is essential for making rising bread because it provides the material for forming the gas cells which give the bread its texture. Different wheat flours have different amounts of gluten in them. Wheat flours having high percentages of gluten are called strong or stronger flours, while wheat flours having small percentages of gluten are called weak or weaker flours. The description that follows and the appended claims relate equally to wheat and triticale as the two gluten- containing grains of the process of this invention.
Advances in agriculture over the years have greatly increased the yield of wheat that can be obtained from a unit of land. However, as the yield of grain increases, it has been found in general that the quantity of gluten in the wheat decreases. Prior to modern agricultural methods it was common for wheat to contain 12% or more gluten, but modern wheat from high-yield agriculture contains about 10% or less of gluten. The term "gluten" as used herein relates to the gluten fraction of wheat which includes moisture; however, the amounts stated are adequate bases for comparison because they are measured on an equivalent basis.
As a result of the foregoing, much wheat is so deficient in gluten that it is difficult to employ it as the sole grain-constituent in bread doughs.
Gluten can be separated from flour readily. When flour is soaked in water, two phases can be readily separated. One phase is a watery suspension of starch in water, and the other is a wet elastic mass. The wet, elastic mass is the gluten phase, and it contains gluten, starch, and water.
Most modern commercial bakeries require about 12% gluten in the flour to obtain satisfactory bread. This gluten concentration can be obtained by adding commercially obtainable dried gluten to the amount that is indigenous to the flour. Dried gluten is obtained from commercial sources which separate gluten from wheat flour and dry it to prevent spoilage. In such operations, starch slurry is an industrial by-product that must be utilized. The dried gluten can be reconstituted by blending it with water, but the reconstituted gluten is only about 70% as effective as the original wet gluten separated from the flour.
The rising or leavening of bread is a complex phenomenon. Leavening includes at least the action of yeast enzymes to decompose carbohydrate to form, among other things, carbon dioxide gas. The dispersion of the resultant carbon dioxide gas through the dough forms bubbles which in turn form a gluten network which traps the bubbles. Baking the bread stabilizes the dough structure. Since sugar is a simpler carbohydrate than starch, the decomposition process promoted by yeast can proceed much faster if sugar is introduced into the flour. In commercial baking, this is frequently done because it is desirable, almost necessary, to bake bread commercially in a continuous process where the mixing, panning, rising, and baking of dough is carried out in a continuous process. In such a continuous process it is essential to employ sugar to avoid long delays in the rising of the dough. Adding sugar to a bread dough speeds the rising process but it even further diminishes the ratio of gluten to carbohydrate unless even greater quantities of dried gluten are added.